What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims

[Rodin]

I have been playing RE4 Remake.

Capcom just keeps delivering. The game looks absolutely gorgeous. Combat is fast paced and lethal- the parrying mechanic makes Leon look like a trained assassin (which he basically is at this point of the game.)

There is a lot of exploring to do this time around, which encourages multiple playthroughs. One boss in particular gave me a harder time than usual, but with the right weapons, it can be overcome. Ashley is a very endearing character, as is Leon. I wish they kept some if the campiness of the original, but this works just as well.

I'd say they kept a fair bit of the campiness. Leon has some great lines, some of which survived from the original and some are new. The banter between Leon, Ashley, and Luis is all pretty campy, and Salazar still chews the scenery every chance he gets.

The one disappointment I've had is that they cut some of my favorite Salazar lines. Some I understand (the terrorism line was relevant in 2005, not so much today), but losing

Spoiler

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the bit where he listens for Leon's impalement and Leon shoots the ear trumpet

felt like a pure missed opportunity.

Overall Capcom have outdone themselves. I was deeply worried about this game when they announced it, not from any lack of trust but because the original RE4 is so damn good. Remaking the game in a way that arguably surpasses the original is truly an impressive feat, and it's clear the people who made the remake know both the original and the fandom inside out.

[Zevox]

DAO can be a pain to control your party, especially on console. Personally, this is why I prefer Mass Effect, the squadmates are there to help out but you never actually need them. Dragon Age meanwhile is stuck in the Holy Trinity mindset that it inherited from MMOs and can't seem to break free - so you need to rely on your party, but the AI makes that annoying at best.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. If you're only controlling one party member at a time, you really shouldn't be too dependent on what the AI is doing with your other party members.

[Anonymouswizard]

In the fight I assume he's talking about, you can set a fire to hurt the attacking enemies, so I suppose your party members can get a little too eager and attack the enemy while they're still in the fire (I don't remember if I've had this issue, but I might have).

Of course you can just set the party to HOLD IT'S POSITION in Origins, which you can't in later games. This probably has to do with how many of the high tier damage spells are AOE DOT deals, and it's useful to have as few enemies as possible running into them (after having your tank generate a toñif aggro and being slapped in a force field of course). But it's also useful when dealing with environmental hazards, or scouting as a rogue.

[Sermil]

DAO can be a pain to control your party, especially on console. Personally, this is why I prefer Mass Effect, the squadmates are there to help out but you never actually need them. Dragon Age meanwhile is stuck in the Holy Trinity mindset that it inherited from MMOs and can't seem to break free - so you need to rely on your party, but the AI makes that annoying at best.

I mean, way, way, way back, I remember feeling frustrated when Ultima VII moved to a real-time, AI-controls-your-companions model. I really liked the more complicated, grid, turn-based combat of Ultima III through Ultima VI, and didn't understand why they got rid of it for a system where half the time, your companions run off in the wrong direction or the combat's over before you can figure out which ability to use or whatever.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've had another crack at Conan Exiles, and I'm getting along with it a lot better. On a private server and wishing I'd cranked the crafting speed up a lot higher, but it's fun. Plus while stone weapons decay pretty quickly it's not unmanageably so, I've yet to have one break on me so it's not BotW levels of annoying.

Did have a pick break on me, but that's because I decided to make a little 5x3 house on the river. Which is probably a bit far from wherever the iron spawns, but I'll likely be moving on in a bit anyway and it's close to where some potential victims spawn. Plus I needed somewhere to store my tanning and leather working equipment.

Although considering how I've roleplayed so far I've really picked the wrong god.

[Psyren]

I mean, way, way, way back, I remember feeling frustrated when Ultima VII moved to a real-time, AI-controls-your-companions model. I really liked the more complicated, grid, turn-based combat of Ultima III through Ultima VI, and didn't understand why they got rid of it for a system where half the time, your companions run off in the wrong direction or the combat's over before you can figure out which ability to use or whatever.

I think it boils down to my frustration with real-time and real-time-with-pause in general. If I'm controlling a whole party of more or less equal combatants and success depends on all of them coordinating precisely, I'd rather the game just be turn-based so I can actually control that coordination. Whereas if it's real-time, give me one person to control and make it so the contributions of the others don't matter much to the outcome beyond the odd ability I can combo with. It's the games that try to have their cake and eat it too that I find frustrating.

[Batcathat]

I think it boils down to my frustration with real-time and real-time-with-pause in general. If I'm controlling a whole party of more or less equal combatants and success depends on all of them coordinating precisely, I'd rather the game just be turn-based so I can actually control that coordination. Whereas if it's real-time, give me one person to control and make it so the contributions of the others don't matter much to the outcome beyond the odd ability I can combo with. It's the games that try to have their cake and eat it too that I find frustrating.

I get that perspective, but what I like about real time with pause is being able to pick different play styles depending on the occasion instead of being stuck with either the slow-paced precision of turn based or the frantic action of real time (Don't get me wrong, I like real time and especially turn based, but they have their drawbacks as well).

[AlanBruce]

I'd say they kept a fair bit of the campiness. Leon has some great lines, some of which survived from the original and some are new. The banter between Leon, Ashley, and Luis is all pretty campy, and Salazar still chews the scenery every chance he gets.

The one disappointment I've had is that they cut some of my favorite Salazar lines. Some I understand (the terrorism line was relevant in 2005, not so much today), but losing

Spoiler

Show

the bit where he listens for Leon's impalement and Leon shoots the ear trumpet

felt like a pure missed opportunity.

Overall Capcom have outdone themselves. I was deeply worried about this game when they announced it, not from any lack of trust but because the original RE4 is so damn good. Remaking the game in a way that arguably surpasses the original is truly an impressive feat, and it's clear the people who made the remake know both the original and the fandom inside out.

In retrospect, the campiness is there. I like Leon’s quips when in combat. Either because he ran out of bullets, took down an enemy, or saw a Plaga sprout.

Salazar does indeed chew the scenery and I dare say he’s even more memorable than Saddler. I too wished that scene with the pit & bullet had been included, but I can live without it.

I believe they are releasing Mercenaries for free in April. Speculation abounds whether extra DLC will be added. Specifically, Separate Ways.

[Rynjin]

As someone who sadly never got to play 4 (it's the ONLY mainline game I never got the opportunity to play), I've been loving the remake. Seems campy enough to me, with Leon going from "this is literally my first day on the job" weeny boy good guy to "the dude who has a one-liner for everything".

Also the villagers constantly shouting what is, as far as I can make out, "Heads up!" in Spanish every time they throw a weapon is inherently funny.

Edit: Okay after a search they're not saying "Arriba eso" but "Ahi va eso" ("here it comes!") but that's still cheesy as ****.

Edit 2: I realized this probably doesn't make much sense without my whole train of though, because "arriba eso" doesn't directly translate to "heads up" either but I know just enough Spanish to know that trying to translate idioms from random dialects directly is an exercise in insanity so my thought process went "arriba eso" --> "up there" --> "up top" ---> "heads up".

[AlanBruce]

As someone who sadly never got to play 4 (it's the ONLY mainline game I never got the opportunity to play), I've been loving the remake. Seems campy enough to me, with Leon going from "this is literally my first day on the job" weeny boy good guy to "the dude who has a one-liner for everything".

Also the villagers constantly shouting what is, as far as I can make out, "Heads up!" in Spanish every time they throw a weapon is inherently funny.

Edit: Okay after a search they're not saying "Arriba eso" but "Ahi va eso" ("here it comes!") but that's still cheesy as ****.

Edit 2: I realized this probably doesn't make much sense without my whole train of though, because "arriba eso" doesn't directly translate to "heads up" either but I know just enough Spanish to know that trying to translate idioms from random dialects directly is an exercise in insanity so my thought process went "arriba eso" --> "up there" --> "up top" ---> "heads up".

They make a lot of nods to the original- especially in the trophy/challenge names.

As for the enemies, I like what they say now. They outright insult Leon when shot in the legs and left vulnerable. Two phrases I enjoyed here that weren’t present in the original is when a villager is hurt and open to melee, “Mi cuerpo…!”, which translates to “my body!” Makes sense given that they have something inside, which you can see still writhing if you blow them apart with a shotgun.

The other, which caught me entirely by surprise and tension is later in the castle when the red zealot screams, “Gloria a las plagas!!!” This means , “Glory to Las Plagas!”

And when you hear that, it’s time to run.

[Zevox]

So, I hate to say it, but I think I'm giving up on Mega Man X3. Was going through it just fine and enjoying myself, probably a bit less than in X2 for a few reasons, but still liking the game. Then I got to the first Sigma stage - or Doppler stage, apparently they're called in 3. Remember my complaint about X1 feeling like it wanted to get you with cheap-shot instant-death traps? X3 for this stage looked at that and said "hold my beer." There's a slightly annoying bit early on where spiked ceilings lower at you when you're jumping over pits which is a really unpleasant surprise the first time you go there, but is at least easy to deal with after by using air dash. But right after that, there's a bit where you need to wall jump up a long area as the walls are closing in to crush you - alternating walls from either side, one after the other, for at least five sets of them. This means the one above you only needs to get to about the midway point before you're trapped and screwed, so you need to be really fast. And after quite a few attempts, I have never been able to pass the last wall, and on plenty of occasions not even made it that far. I've looked up videos of people doing it, googled for advice, tried some suggestions; nothing helps. There is just very little room for error with it, you simply need to be lightning quick and precise. It makes everything in X1 look easy by comparison.

Knowing just how damn hard that is to get past, I can't help but feel like even if I keep at it and eventually succeed, all that'll happen is that I'll run out of lives at some point after that (unless somehow everything after that is the easiest endgame in Mega Man history), and have to start all over again, and then need to go through that struggle again. And I do not want to do that. So, on to X4, I guess.

[Razade]

So, I hate to say it, but I think I'm giving up on Mega Man X3. Was going through it just fine and enjoying myself, probably a bit less than in X2 for a few reasons, but still liking the game. Then I got to the first Sigma stage - or Doppler stage, apparently they're called in 3. Remember my complaint about X1 feeling like it wanted to get you with cheap-shot instant-death traps? X3 for this stage looked at that and said "hold my beer." There's a slightly annoying bit early on where spiked ceilings lower at you when you're jumping over pits which is a really unpleasant surprise the first time you go there, but is at least easy to deal with after by using air dash. But right after that, there's a bit where you need to wall jump up a long area as the walls are closing in to crush you - alternating walls from either side, one after the other, for at least five sets of them. This means the one above you only needs to get to about the midway point before you're trapped and screwed, so you need to be really fast. And after quite a few attempts, I have never been able to pass the last wall, and on plenty of occasions not even made it that far. I've looked up videos of people doing it, googled for advice, tried some suggestions; nothing helps. There is just very little room for error with it, you simply need to be lightning quick and precise. It makes everything in X1 look easy by comparison.

Knowing just how damn hard that is to get past, I can't help but feel like even if I keep at it and eventually succeed, all that'll happen is that I'll run out of lives at some point after that (unless somehow everything after that is the easiest endgame in Mega Man history), and have to start all over again, and then need to go through that struggle again. And I do not want to do that. So, on to X4, I guess.

X3 is notoriously the most difficult of the X games on the SNES. Between tons of moments like that, the Sigma fight where his weak spot is about two pixels large and a ton of other stuff. X3 is a great game if you're willing to take the punishment, but the punishment is pretty arbitrary as a lot of Nintendo-Hard games are.

[Zevox]

X3 is notoriously the most difficult of the X games on the SNES. Between tons of moments like that, the Sigma fight where his weak spot is about two pixels large and a ton of other stuff. X3 is a great game if you're willing to take the punishment, but the punishment is pretty arbitrary as a lot of Nintendo-Hard games are.

The thing is, up until that stage, I wouldn't say that the game was like that at all. I'd say for all of the Robot Master Maverick stages, X1 was harder, and X2 about the same difficulty. The only thing like X1's frustrating elements from the Maverick stages was Blizzard Buffalo's*, where there were a couple of icy slopes you would slide down very fast as soon as you set foot on them, right into some spikes. Which was annoying the first time, but easily avoided thereafter.

And as far as I'm concerned, there's a line between being difficult in a fun, challenging way (which the best Mega Man games are I'd say), and being difficult in an unfair, frustrating way, and that particular part of X3 sails far past it. I didn't like Sigma stage 1 in X1, but I did beat it several times. This one is just so bad it kills my desire to even keep trying.

*Aside: while I think the Mavericks' designs in X3 are pretty good, I can't help but notice that none of the animal choices line up with the power theme at all. Blizzard Buffalo? Toxic Seahorse? Tunnel Rhino? It's like they designed them by deliberately picking an animal that you'd never expect to have each given theme. It's kind of funny.

[LibraryOgre]

Arrrrgh. Messed up in FO;NV, and my last real save was a long time ago. So I have to do all this AGAIN, and it makes me grumpy. So, take a detour, come back to it.

I'm slowly working my way through the various scenarios in Surviving Mars... I was pretty proud of my last run, partially because I set up my connecting complex of domes so well. I did REALLY well, despite having them, IMO, sub-par leader profile of Ecologist (I select my scenario, but take a random leader profile). However, the game gets really easy once you have a Mohole and a Space Elevator. Send up way too much metal, get back a huge amount of whatever you need (except food). Money approaches infinite, and you can just do what you need.

I also tried playing a bit of Banished, and then fell down a rabbithole of wiki information last night. I'm now looking forward to wasting most of tomorrow building a new settlement.

An aside, that applies to neither of these games: Something I hate in sequential tactical/city building games is when you have to research the same technologies again and again. Surviving Mars? Each attempt is more or less an alternate reality, that's fine. THIS time, Russia is settling Mars and there's military drones everywhere. This next time, it's India and there is a war on Earth, so you have to rapidly scale to accept refugees. But Aven Colony? "Look, I know you figured this out in place A on the planet, but now you have to completely research it again on place B." Going from scenario to scenario is part of the story... and things you did before for reason don't count.

[Cespenar]

I get that perspective, but what I like about real time with pause is being able to pick different play styles depending on the occasion instead of being stuck with either the slow-paced precision of turn based or the frantic action of real time (Don't get me wrong, I like real time and especially turn based, but they have their drawbacks as well).

The infinity engine version obviously works, but there is a subtle sweet spot in the default speed that makes it all tick IMO.

Like, both I and another avid BG2 fan friend almost bounced off of PoE1-2 before I realized that there was a game speed control button that allowed 1/2 speed. Similarly with NWN2 but I did bounce that time.

[Psyren]

1) With Solasta having gone on sale this week, I've decided to give it a try, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Not only is it pretty true to the 5e rules, they came up with their own subclasses that are really interesting. It's also fully voice acted and my ragtag party of misfits are pretty snarky.

2) I'm really enjoying the PC version of Returnal as well. Just cleared the first 3 bosses / first half of the game.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Started Dredge. Haven’t really gotten past the preview quests/islands yet but I’m having fun so far. Got a couple rod types now, a decent starter light and an engine upgrade.

If anyone else is starting a play through, my unsolicited advice is to prioritize the engine upgrade. The extra speed is very noticeable and helpful for exploring.

[ShadowShinobi]

I'm slowly working my way through the various scenarios in Surviving Mars... I was pretty proud of my last run, partially because I set up my connecting complex of domes so well. I did REALLY well, despite having them, IMO, sub-par leader profile of Ecologist (I select my scenario, but take a random leader profile). However, the game gets really easy once you have a Mohole and a Space Elevator. Send up way too much metal, get back a huge amount of whatever you need (except food). Money approaches infinite, and you can just do what you need.

I got Surviving Mars, free on Epic, a while back. I tried it out, but was having trouble getting very far. I recently looked up a guide, and have started playing again. My main problem was that I wasn't specializing enough. Hopefully, I'll do better with this colony.

[GloatingSwine]

The infinity engine version obviously works, but there is a subtle sweet spot in the default speed that makes it all tick IMO.

Like, both I and another avid BG2 fan friend almost bounced off of PoE1-2 before I realized that there was a game speed control button that allowed 1/2 speed. Similarly with NWN2 but I did bounce that time.

Yeah, half speed in battles is the absolute saviour of PoE and Tyranny. There's an option that automatically turns it on.

PoE 1 has more and larger encounters so it's even more vital there.

[Form]

I've picked up Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and I'm already starting to feel a bit overwhelmed? I've only barely started out in Kenabres, shortly after the demons' attack, and I've already sunk 10 hours into the game and got a bunch of scrolls that I don't know what to do with. I have half a mind to just sell them all and maybe buy some later if I really need them, but I'm also tempted to keep them in reserve. I just wish I knew which ones were worth keeping.

I think this is going to be a long game. There seems to be a lot to the story and the combat and character building draws things out considerably. I'm not sure if I'll finish this one.

I got Surviving Mars, free on Epic, a while back. I tried it out, but was having trouble getting very far. I recently looked up a guide, and have started playing again. My main problem was that I wasn't specializing enough. Hopefully, I'll do better with this colony.

That game has a really cool concept (colonize the Red Planet!), but when I played it I got kind of bored with it. Admittedly the fact I wasn't very good at it probably didn't help, but I also felt the game treated colonizing Mars as relatively mundane instead of exciting.

[Aragehaor]

I've picked up Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and I'm already starting to feel a bit overwhelmed? I've only barely started out in Kenabres, shortly after the demons' attack, and I've already sunk 10 hours into the game and got a bunch of scrolls that I don't know what to do with. I have half a mind to just sell them all and maybe buy some later if I really need them, but I'm also tempted to keep them in reserve. I just wish I knew which ones were worth keeping.

I think this is going to be a long game. There seems to be a lot to the story and the combat and character building draws things out considerably. I'm not sure if I'll finish this one.

Pathfinder:Wrath of the Righteous suffers from considerable density, it explains more then enough for someone familiar with Tabletop systems (and Pathfinder, specifically) but if you lack such familarity you may struggle.

I'd advise you to lower the difficulty preemptively, as this game can be very harsh and unbalanced in the challenge of enemies, especially once you leave Kenabres, if you enjoy the game enough for a second play-through is when i would recommend (If you *really* enjoyed the combat, i guess) raising the difficulty, as unless your first character is very well optimized you *WILL* struggle or be unable to complete the game at higher difficulties.

[tyckspoon]

I've picked up Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and I'm already starting to feel a bit overwhelmed? I've only barely started out in Kenabres, shortly after the demons' attack, and I've already sunk 10 hours into the game and got a bunch of scrolls that I don't know what to do with. I have half a mind to just sell them all and maybe buy some later if I really need them, but I'm also tempted to keep them in reserve. I just wish I knew which ones were worth keeping.

If it's anything like the Kingmaker game, most of them are junk (or will be in a couple of levels once your actual casters start outscaling the default caster levels/saving throw difficulties on the scrolls.) Buffing spells (Bless/Prayer/Barkskin/Shield of Faith/etc) can be relevant for a while or be used to extend your caster's slots while you're in lower levels, and there are a small handful of other spells that never really stop being useful for a few purposes even when cast at low levels (like Haste basically lasts one fight whether you cast it at level 20 or level 5, casting it off a scroll is fine) but you probably won't really miss them if you just sell the lot of 'em.

[Mx.Silver]

Speaking of PoE, I wrapped-up my Implement Ranger playthrough of the first game this evening. Went reasonably well, although to be fair if you're on normal most of the combat becomes pretty superfluous once you're in the mid-game (with the slight exception of the final boss fight and the major exception of The Master Below). I'll start the Deadfire half next week, multi-class into Ranger/Monk and attempt some nonsense with the sceptre profciency.

[Zevox]

So, Mega Man X4. This is an interesting one - different from its predecessors right off the bat big time in visuals and overall feel. I can immediately tell it's based on Mega Man 8's visuals, which, eh. Not the best Mega Man has ever looked, but not bad. Strangely I do kind of feel like X4 looks a little rougher around the edges than MM8, despite it apparently coming out a year after MM8, but perhaps my memory of MM8's look is just better than how it actually looks.

It takes a little bit to adjust to different feel of movement and shooting in the game, but once I did, I think I like it in that regard, even a bit more than its predecessors. A big reason for that being dash-jumping off walls no longer requiring you to precisely time the dash input to your jump, and just working if you're hold dash when doing a wall jump, it makes some important mobility very smooth compared to the previous games. Also, it was nice that I could actually map things to my second shoulder buttons, which I couldn't do in X1-3 even though this collection is on a modern console. The R2/L2 buttons just feel better as my main shoulder buttons to use than R1/L1 on a PS5 controller.

Outside of that, it can honestly be a bit of a mixed bag. Some parts are excessively hard (screw Jet Stingray and his entire stage especially), while others are stupidly easy (half of the bosses just get stuck in a stunlock loop if you have the weapon they're weak to*). Some weapons have way too few uses from a full tank (Soul Body and Lightning Web can barely last long enough to kill the bosses that are weak to them), others have way too many (Ground Hunter, Aiming Laser). Even the final boss is like this, where it's insanely hard at first and I was wondering if I wasn't going to be able to beat it at all, but after like, a dozen tries or so, I wound up beating it without even using sub-tank energy - it's basically more over-complicated than anything, making it take a lot more tries to get the patterns and how to dodge each attack and effectively counter-attack down. Though I cannot imagine how tough it would be without the defense boost from the body armor piece, the amount of damage it does even when you have that on some things is nuts.

*Yes, that happened in prior games sometimes too, but not to this extent. The Mushroom boss and Magma Dragoon in particular just do not get to attack you if you have the right weapon, and several others you just need to dodge a very easily avoided move (and they always do the same one after getting hit by the weapon they're weak to) before you get a second shot off.

All in all, I'd certainly say I enjoyed it, but some of those flaws hold it back from being one I like more than X2. Definitely like it more than X1 though, and probably X3 as well, though mostly because X3 shoots itself in the foot once you get to the endgame stages, as I described before. And since X4 does finally let you play as Zero in full, I think I'll be running through it again as him before I move on to X5.

[LibraryOgre]

I also tried playing a bit of Banished, and then fell down a rabbithole of wiki information last night. I'm now looking forward to wasting most of tomorrow building a new settlement.

I did, and I had a lot of fun. I built up to a pretty stable 200 person community, that had some room to grow. I did not realize that Gatherers were the powerhouse of food generation; I always went to agriculture as soon as possible, but the way the game is set up, you want to live in a dense forest with a lot of people gathering food.

I got Surviving Mars, free on Epic, a while back. I tried it out, but was having trouble getting very far. I recently looked up a guide, and have started playing again. My main problem was that I wasn't specializing enough. Hopefully, I'll do better with this colony.

Your first dome should focus HEAVILY on agriculture. I don't even set up a dome until I have farms (unless I'm playing India, where you get a bonus for setting one up quickly). IME, the biggest problems are food and water, every time... never have enough water (the mega-storage water containers are awesome), and you either are skirting starvation or buried in food. OTOH, I find that the only interesting part, these days, is the different story challenges... once you get the mohole wonder, a lot of the challenge goes away (because you start getting more or less infinite money), and with the space elevator, it goes away completely (because getting more money for your massive amount of rare metals) is almost instant)

I've picked up Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and I'm already starting to feel a bit overwhelmed? I've only barely started out in Kenabres, shortly after the demons' attack, and I've already sunk 10 hours into the game and got a bunch of scrolls that I don't know what to do with. I have half a mind to just sell them all and maybe buy some later if I really need them, but I'm also tempted to keep them in reserve. I just wish I knew which ones were worth keeping.

For the most part, they aren't. Your characters usually have something better they can be doing than reading a scroll, though some of the buffs are useful (I will, not infrequently, use a Bulls Strength before fast-travelling while ridiculously overburdened). If you keep using your wizard (Nenio), she'll get really good at them, but, I find, you usually have enough slots that it doesn't reach that point.

Bright side? While they mostly aren't worth much, they also weigh nothing. They are cash. Despite what my inventory screen says.

[DaedalusMkV]

I did, and I had a lot of fun. I built up to a pretty stable 200 person community, that had some room to grow. I did not realize that Gatherers were the powerhouse of food generation; I always went to agriculture as soon as possible, but the way the game is set up, you want to live in a dense forest with a lot of people gathering food.

My record in Banished was about 1400 people, at which point I had a self-sustainable settlement but just couldn't be bothered to keep growing because I pretty much occupied the entire map with some sort of industry and continuing to grow would have required me to do a lot of juggling with my balance of resources and trade to cover the loss of forests for wood harvesting.

At the beginning of the game food production definitely favours harvesting (and fishing! Fishing is great! Oh, and especially hunting. A couple of hunting posts in the early game will be a phenomenal source of food and clothing) over agriculture. It's consistent, so requires less storage, has a bit of inherent variety in food production to make your villagers happy and coexists with forestry and early-game medicine in very valuable ways. In the early game where people are your most limited resource it's invaluable, but it's extremely space inefficient and coexists very poorly with other industries as a result. You'll always want to have gatherers working where your foresters are handling wood production, but gathering just doesn't scale well once you start looking to have a large settlement with the full range of jobs in play. In the midgame space starts to be a lot more important than people as far as limited resources go, since travel times quickly get impractical. By the endgame, where space efficiency is the only limitation on growth, gatherers will represent virtually none of your food production. An area of land could support 40 farmers who sustain 200 people, or two gatherers who sustain 20. Unless you desperately need the firewood production the farmers win the land-use argument every time.

IIRC the no-farms strategy can actually support something like 800 people, which is pretty impressive, but I know people better at the game than I who've topped out with over 3000 people in their community.

[zlefin]

Been a long time since I played megaman, I wonder if I played through all of the X's back in the day; I know in general I played alot of them, but I don't recall specifically. Did you get the ultraspecials that can one hit kill stuff if you get them juuuust right? I know x1/2 had them, not sure about past that.

It almost inspires me to go out and play the old NES megamans as well as the SNES ones, I liked a lot of those, especially the music in some of them. Reminds me of the old days of relying on GAMEFAQS and such for the nice writeups that covered things.

That kind of unfun difficulty is sadly common, but as someone who enjoyed Super Meatboy it tends not to bother me as much; I guess I like learning to do things in a super optimized fashion. Reminds me of learning to run the old ninja gaiden games very fast and some other speed runs I used ot do.

Hearthstone had an amusing april fools patch notes, I need to remember to check if they put any of them into the game to make the joke better, as a few of them could be put in and still work more or less, at least for a day.

Ah, surviving mars, I also tried it for a bit, but like cities skylines I never really got into it enough to play more than several hours. Not sure why, I've often enjoyed games like that, it just didn't grab me enough. In Mars I think part of the reason is that it gets a bit tedious setting stuff up. Like slowly expanding/exploring and finding stuff in the game is fun; but when my save stopped I was at a point where it's time to setup a couple big domes, and it's a whole lot of paused clicking to setup a large dome. Setting up a small dome is ok, and fun to slowly grow; but when oyu have to manually fill out multiple large domes it's just a lot of work before you get to see anything.

[Zevox]

Blew through MMX4 as Zero today. That was pretty fun - Zero getting completely different things than X did from the bosses was unexpected, as was him not having his blaster as a ranged weapon the way he does in the Mega Man Zero games. Really helped create a very different experience playing through it as him versus X. Sometimes easier (the pizza cutter jump attack is great for getting through a lot of tricky stage situations; the Peacock boss), but often harder (Magma Dragoon and Slash Beast especially stand out here, as well as the General and Sigma's final form). Harder especially because Zero doesn't get X's armor upgrades, which especially hurts since the body armor cuts damage in half for X, so Zero functionally takes twice as much damage from those end-game bosses. Feels like he dishes out damage faster than X too though, which definitely helps.

It's also nice see where Zero's moves from the Marvel vs Capcom games come from - even if some of them are in name only. Ryuenjin (fire uppcut sword strike) and the pizza cutter jump attack are exactly as they are in MvC, but Raijingeki went from a slow lightning spear-like move in this game to the lightning dive-dash in MvC, Shippuga from a basic dash attack in this game to a projectile energy wave in MvC, and Rakouha from a move that shoots energy pellets in all directions around Zero to a move that drops pillars of energy in front of him. Good changes in all respects, I'd say. Heck, I don't even know why they mapped Shippuga to the special move button in X4, it's basically just the normal dash attack he gets in the Mega Man Zero games, there's nothing special about it.

Honestly, it raises my opinion of the game that playing as Zero is handled so well and makes for a very fun second run. Might be as good as X2 after all.

Been a long time since I played megaman, I wonder if I played through all of the X's back in the day; I know in general I played alot of them, but I don't recall specifically. Did you get the ultraspecials that can one hit kill stuff if you get them juuuust right? I know x1/2 had them, not sure about past that.

You mean the Hadoken and Shoryuken? No, too many prerequisites to getting those. Though only the Shoryuken could one-shot bosses from what I read of them, Hadoken was just big damage. And nothing like that in 3 and 4 (I guess tatsu and the donkey kick weren't famous enough for them to reference).

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I am on the fifth (and as far as I know the last) island chain in Dredge, plus the in-game corkboard that holds all my quests is almost full, so I’m assuming I’m near the end.

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Island chains #3 and 4 were a bit empty. I’m blaming the Pontoon merchants for this; they’re all identical, where the first town had different people to sell fish to or get your boat repaired. This sucks a lot of personality out of the regions, plus the UI gets irritating because when it’s different people doing the repairing and the fish buying it makes sense that I have to leave one and go to another, but when they’re the same person it feels like a meaningless screen switch. Plus they don’t have separate quests, or even different appearances, so they just kind of feel like they were slapped in there so the player has a place to sell their fish.

I’m also a little tired of having to swap out rods for different fish types, but I just got the last major hull upgrade and have a few minor ones left to go so hopefully that will solve the problem.

Other than that I am pleased with the variety of fish to catch, as well as the fact that there are different mini-games for catching some of them, it helps keep the fishing interesting. The magic spells I’ve acquired so far have been useful without trivializing the game which is nice. The drop rate for the mutated fish so far hasn’t been low enough to be frustrating either.

I am also pleased to report that Dredge is on the list of games that contain petable animals.

[NeoVid]

Set aside time to try one of the cooler looking games I've seen in a while, Wo Long, and found out it is just as impressive as it looked. But also stupidly tough... the tutorial boss kicked my ass so hard I'm not sure if I'll ever find it again. Finally did beat him, and reached chapter 2... then got hit with massive technical issues that weren't present at all in the starting zone, and had to stop there. So I went looking for a game I've neglected for a while to fill in the time, which resulted in...

Getting back into City of Heroes super hard in the past weeks. Considering my biggest regret in my lifetime of gaming was being too casual with CoH back in the day and not even seeing half the storylines despite all the years I was into it, this is a good thing. A possibly not good thing is that I'm thinking of a new character concept nearly every damn day, so I'm not getting the chance to see anything I haven't already played through. Still, the fact that we can again play a game where you can have enough fun on the character creation screen that you lose track of time is something I should be grateful for.